Who in the hell is Dan Savage? What are you guys reading where things like this are discussed?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Now that you mention it, that does make sense in a professional setting. My whole knowledge about shared sex toys come from cursory readings of the Babeland FAQ about caring for your purchases, and they tend to focus more on private home use rather than pro use.
I have to admit, it did sort of amuse to think of people sterilizing dildos. I keep picturing a gas autoclave full of sex toys in those peel-open surgical pouches. And a sex worker showing someone the indicator tape before open their anal beads.
Newspaper columnist, sometime NPR commentator. His This American Life bits are up there with David Sedaris and John Hodgman for me, especially the one where he talks about walking his son’s poodle at night in a cruisy gay park. ROTLF stuff as far as I’m concerned. Plus, he gives great advice.
I didn’t read the full article, but it sounds like she didn’t refuse to clean it and she didn’t refuse to clean it in front of him. She simply refused to be questioned during a session and told him to go the fuck away if he insisted on doing so. Though if he was a masochist I would have knocked him around for a while instead, but to each their own.
He was certainly in the wrong.
He’s a big gay sex advice columnist for The Stranger, an alternative newspaper in Seattle. His column is also distributed to other publications.
Well, technically speaking, anything that has only been sanitized isn’t sterile. Sanitized means it’s been cleaned of organic soiling and then treated with a disinfectant. Sterile means it’s been cleaned, disinfected, packaged up with a sterility indicator, and run through a steam or gas autoclave. Nothing the average non-medical person touches is sterile, generally speaking.
Also, I have to hope that even if someone were fairly indiscriminate about who they have vanilla sex with, they’d be pretty choosy about who they let tie them up and shove something up their asses. Really, if you don’t trust someone at all, why would you put yourself in such a vulnerable position with them?
This column just provides more proof for my opinion of Dan Savage.
The man is absolutely, unquestionably right and knowledgable about the questions he is asked 50% of the time. The remaining 50% of the time he is a finger wagging ass hole that makes me want to knock his teeth out.
Although, that’s still a better percentage than Ann Landers/Dear Abby/Whatever Person Writes Under Those Names Now.
To me, it’s a matter of context and industry standards.
Context: he chose to interrupt her in her work to bring in an attitude that was totally out of line with what he’d agreed to, on an issue that was not (according to the information) time-critical. In my view, this is roughly analogous (love that phrase!) to a client interrupting his web guru in mid-code to demand that the guru explain every step of the coding process, RIGHT NOW, because he wants to know that the guru is doing it right for future projects. It’s unacceptable client behavior, assigned an inappropriate level of urgency, and interrupting the work that the professional is being paid to do.
Industry standards: you are correct that pro doms are not licensed by any governmental entity when they practice in the US, and also that there is not standardized regulation and oversight of each pro’s policies and procedures. This does not mean that there are not industry standards, which both pros and their clients are aware of, barring the client being very, very new to the scene. One of the most basic industry standards is cleanliness, because we’re very aware of the risks of disease and infection. Someone mentioned an autoclave earlier - it makes a good joke, but many women who make their whole living as pros invest in cleaning equipment of that caliber or close to it. Yes, there are exceptions - pros who have poor cleanliness or hygiene habits. The exceptions are (invariably, in my experience) only in the industry for a short time, as their available clientele shrinks to nothing within a matter of months once their reputation becomes known.
Yes, it’s less regulated than other industries, and so the enforcement through self-policing and the drying up of demand is not as rapid or as thorough as I could wish. (If I had my way, pros who don’t clean their equipment would never get more than one client one time, and get blacklisted on a national register. But then, I’m a hardass about sanitation. My ideal world is never gonna happen, but what we’ve got is working so far.)
As to a “real professional” wanting to set their client’s mind at ease - I consider myself professional in any area of work I undertake. I am more than happy to go over my methods either before or after a scene, when I engage as a pro. Hell, if the client has a medical fetish, the sanitation can be part of the scene. However, the client is, at the core, paying for a certain experience. It behooves me to provide that experience for the contracted period. If what the client is paying for is “no compromise, no exceptions, do what I tell you” domination, that’s what he’s going to get while we’re in the scene. Outside of it is a whole different story, because I do pride myself on having happy clients who feel safe and secure in what we do together.
Yes, the dom in the article should (probably) have instructed the client to leave further discussion of her methods for after the scene, rather than in it, if she had such a strict persona in place. But I am, quite frankly, not going to armchair quarterback her - because when it comes to hearing one side of a story where there is this much room for doubt about what actually happened, I’m going to side with the person who has a material investment in maintaining professional standards and a good reputation.
A dom is not a prostitute. There is no intercourse. The dom is a sexual worker, yes, but that is not the same thing.
And the dom in question (presuming I’m reading the column correctly) is an experienced professional who sanitizes all of her gear thoroughly between uses and otherwise engages in fully above-board safe practices. If the sub doesn’t know this, and doesn’t trust that the dom will take care of him, he has no business working with her.
I like Dan Savage, but he’s REALLY wrong on this one. The Dom was a jerk, and deserves to be embarrassed.
Domme. Dom would refer to a male.
I would classify someone who uses a dildo on someone else for money a prostitute. And a guy who is worried about insulting someone he’s paying to treat him like dirt doesn’t understand the arrangement. She should charge him extra and demand that he pay it.
I hope this free city paper doesn’t have Savage’s sexual advice column in the print version. That would be sad.
I’ve never known a definition of prostitute that didn’t include sexual activity with a person for money.
Not necessarily, actually. Dom can be used for either one (in my experience), while domme refers exclusively to dominants who present or identify as female or femme. A number of female dominants (myself included) do not use “domme” because their presentation is very often not femme.*
*Full disclosure: the other reason domme really irks me is that whole “dom-may” pronunciation. Is it fem-may? No. Stop it. [/pet peeve]
If I were a sub, I’d propose to you right here and now.
Maybe it’s a regional thing or something then. I’ve only seen Dom refer to male and Domme refer to female.
Why? You’ve got me utterly mystified with this comment.
As with so much of the terminology we use, I’m sure it changes from place to place and group to group. Either that, or I just hang out with way too many gender-bending freaks. 
KtK: nah, wait till you hear my rant about S/slashy S/speak. Then you’ll turn sub just to watch me go Grammar Nazi on people! 
There is always that. I tend to be rather binary in my thinking regarding gender.
I don’t think there’s aything wrong with insisting on a clean dildo, and I don’t see any reason to give a shit what some hooker thinks about it. I think Savage is out of line on this one. Role playing needs to take a back seat to basic hygene and hookers are supposed to do what they’re told. The customer is always right. If the hooker’s not going to do as she’s told, then what the hell is she getting paid for?